CODE

As we come to Christmas and the new year, it is great to reflect on everything that we’ve achieved this year. Collabora Productivity would not exist without the funding, support and friendship of our partners and customers. When reviewing what we’ve achieved we’re really grateful for your trust & input into our product development, helping to guide which features and fixes we invest in next. Of course we could do nothing without our talented staff – who have worked extremely hard to turn your ideas into working code, alongside a wide community of volunteers.

Because of you 2018 turned out to be an outstanding year! Here are a few tastes of what we achieved with links to the full details:

Collabora Online improvements

Collabora Online 3.0

In February we had a major release, bringing for the first time the infrastructure necessary to bring many rich dialogs to the browser:

This release also brought change tracking management, a thesuarus, sorting and auto-filtering, IPv6 support, PAM integration, and much more. It formed the base for a series of incremental fix and improvement releases through the year.

Collabora Online 3.1

The key feature in this update, requested by our Asian partners was much improved IME integration:

This release also brought support for chart data series editing, hidden tabs,

Collabora Online 3.2

In April we had an update, that brought chart creation to our existing chart editing functionality into writer, calc and impress, as well as data validation – allowing complex spreadsheet data entry:

We also managed to include context menu spelling correction, column formatting, and a new scripting API for integrators.

Collabora Online 3.3

In June we brought another update that significantly improved clipboard paste – preserving formatting, tables, images and more. Another great win was the ability to paste text as CSV (Comma Separated Values) into Calc:

We also took some time to allow people to set basic conditional formats, borders, and added a no-color option to the drop-down:

We also included responsive design improvements for mobile, as well as options to anonymize document and user names when logging and cleaning up our warning dialogs. We also added the ability to connect a remote monitoring server for better Alfresco locking integration and powerful cluster management. With some more fixes and improvements in a 3.1.1 follow up release

Collabora Online 3.4

In October we brought a major set of improvements with significantly improved interactivity halving typing latency in many cases:

We also improved our mobile experience, impress slide-sorter performance, as well as allowing a configurable web root and other fixes. With a pair of 3.4.1 and 3.4.2 minor releases to further address partner issues.

CODE 4.0 RC1

In December we released a major refresh and upgrade as a base for a Collabora Onine 4.0 release in 2019. This refreshed the look of toolbars with a fresh new look from Colibre:

This included lots of ergonomic improvements, improved shape editing controls with re-sizing previews and a convenient palette to insert shapes. A large number of mobile device improvements were also made – including a stripped-down viewing mode, with auto-hiding, scrollable toolbars, and panning menus. We also added zoom & pan of complex dialogs allowing access to rich desktop functionality on mobile:

Collabora Office 6.0 brings major improvements

Every year, we refresh Collabora Office; our enterprise-grade, long term supported open-source office suite. Collabora Office 6.0 brought a host of new features and interoperability improvements. After all the work on interoperabilty and our creation of an innovative new interoperbility tool: COLEAT, we called Collabora Office 6.0 The Migrator’s Choice.

COLEAT interoperability tool

One of the major problems large enterprises often have is un-documented, legacy line of business applications often written in VB using COM to drive and re-use Microsoft Office. With Collabora Office 6.0 we have created a great new complementary interoperability tool: COLEAT that lets Collabora Office 6.0 act as a drop-in replacement via our compatibility APIs. It also implements a tracing tool to allow easy troubleshooting it complements our work making many more VBA macro driven documents work out of the box.

Improving Interoperability

Several of our partners asked us to improve PPTX interoperability so we invested a chunk of time in improving round-trip fidelity between Powerpoint and Collabora Office, avoiding unnecessary warnings, fixing export of group shapes, export of embedded videos, and preservation of customXML on export. We also implemented PPTM (PPTX with macros) – preserving the VBA streams on export. Other hard to visualize fixes around animations were done too, as well as improving document layout:

Other 6.0 pieces:

In 2018 – we deprecated the GovOffice brand, and made 5 years of support lifetime an option that can be ordered for Collabora Office. We included large numbers of features and fixes which we had implemented for our customers on top of LibreOffice 5.3 as well – from mail-merge, ADMX lock-down improvements, autotext import improvements, SharePoint lists / IQY import and much more.

We continued to implement small new features and fixes on top of 6.0 through 2018 including a built-in MariaDB/MySQL connector, font effect transformations and other VBA and interoperability fixes as well as ongoing security updates. In 2019 we’ll be releasing Collabora Office 6.2 incorporating another round of Collabora and community development by mid 2019.

Collabora Online for bulk Document Conversion

One thing that we tried to encourage this year is the move to using Collabora Online’s built-in REST API for Document Conversion – which can re-use all the efficiency, sharing and security improvements we’ve built into Collabora Online. Good process management of conversions, size limits, timeouts with hard-killing the few processes that mis-behave – all in a friendly package. And of course faster than JODConverter and unoconv too:

We could also enjoy spending the time tweaking various conversions to accelerate specific cases. It is great to be able to focus on specific conversions and squeeze out some low hanging fruit, eg. 5x faster ODT → XHTML

Adding, and using lots of new options such as NoFileSync, NoThumbnail, HiddenForCovnersion, and lazy loading autoformat tables when they’re actually needed.

Adfinis & Collabora bring LibreOffice to iOS

Why not get involved in development using TestFlight and help us meet our goal of a good, Open Source, offline office suite solution in the first half of 2019.

Yet more LibreOffice goodness

Of course, we contribute all of our code changes back to LibreOffice, or
the relevant up-stream project. We love to contribute to and work alongside
the LibreOffice community (infographic). Serving with two seats on the TDF Board and Membership Committee, as well as being Advisory Board members.

Thanks to AMD we’ve managed to hugely improve parallel CPU computation of large spreadsheets, and test all available bug documents with both threading and OpenCL to ensure great behavior in all known corner cases. We’ve also re-worked text rendering to avoid lots of redundant re-shaping of the same text – accelerating complex text locales.

Working with SUSE, we have recently started to improve our support for SmartArt where shape fallbacks are missing, and making some progress towards sensible constraint-based layout of diagrams from Office files, follow Miklos’ blog for improvements working towards LibreOffice 6.3.

We’ve also managed to fix large numbers of bugs, and continue to do large scale cleanups of the C++ core to make it easier to develop against – more detail than can fit in what started as a short write-up.

Summary

Just a taste, a few screenshots and some pointers towards more details of what has been achieved. Thank you once again to all who worked with us as partners, customers who funded everything we do, and community who made it fun. We’re looking forward to achieving even more next year, if you’d like to get involved its easy to partner with us, buy from us, or to get involved in the community. And finally – thanks to the whole team that worked so hard to make it all happen.

CODE 3.0 brings rich PC dialogs with a wealth of new office functionality to the browser

Cambridge, United Kingdom – December 21, 2017 – Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, is excited to announce the release of CODE 3.0 which, for the very first time brings full-feature editing dialogs, familiar from the PC LibreOffice version to the browser. Developers and home users are encouraged to update, try it out and get involved with the latest developments – however for enterprise production users are recommended to continue to use Collabora Online 2.1.5 or wait for the next release – due soon.

CODE is the LibreOffice Online solution with the latest developments, perfect for home users that want to integrate their own online Office Suite with their preferred File Share and Sync solution. It allows editing of richly formatted documents directly from a web browser, with excellent support for all popular office file formats, including text documents (docx, doc, odt,…), spreadsheets (xlsx, xls, ods,…) and presentations (pptx, ppt, odp,…). The purpose of CODE is to give interested developers from any field an easy way to get early access to the very latest feature additions and updates to LibreOffice Online, in order to enable them to develop, test to make it better, and contribute back to LibreOffice. For enterprises that look for a scalable, commercially supported version with Long Term Support, signed security updates and a SLA, Collabora Productivity provides Collabora Online.

Last year, after a lot of work, Collabora Productivity included the collaborative editing to CODE. Now, another milestone has been reached with the release of CODE 3.0, offering the initial full-feature LibreOffice dialogs to be used in the browser. The latest version brings the richness and complexity of eg. complex writer numbering, or powerful spreadsheet filtering. This sharing of user experience with LibreOffice users will allow new UI features to debut simultaneously in both online and PC clients, driving improvement in both of them.

Collabora Productivity has been working hard to make it easy for people to get and use Collabora Online by partnering and integrating with all sorts of open source file syncing solutions from ownCloud and Nextcloud to pydio, seafile, EGroupware and many others. CODE has two million docker image downloads, and now features a very easy way to install from the Univention app-store.

The goal of CODE is to get as many people as possible to try it out and get back control of their own online documents. Visit https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/ to read how to set up CODE in your preferred Groupware, or File Share and Sync solution, or to learn about how to participate in this great project.

Screenshots

Grouping feature and AutoFilter dialog in a spreadsheet in CODE.

Format paragraph dialog on a text document in CODE.

Another dialog that helps you fix the line in a presentation in CODE.

Try it out

Developers & home users:
Visit https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/ to read how to set up CODE in your preferred Groupware, or File Share and Sync solution, or to learn about how to participate in this great project.

Add LibreOffice Online functionality to your products! Simply fill out the “Become a partner” form and learn how you can do this.

About Collabora Productivity:

Collabora Productivity is the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, providing a range of products and consulting to enterprise and government. Powered by the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers in the world, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community. Collabora Office for Desktop and Collabora Online provide a business-hardened office suite with long-term, multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora, the global software consultancy dedicated to providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries. For more information, visit www.collaboraoffice.com or follow @CollaboraOffice on Twitter.

Cambridge, United Kingdom – November 15, 2017 – Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, is excited to announce a new release of its flagship enterprise-ready cloud document suite – Collabora Online 2.1.5, with new features and multiple improvements.

The Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) has been updated to version 2.1.5 as well.

What’s new in Collabora Online 2.1.5?

The following features and improvements are new since Collabora Online 2.1.4:

Save As support

File → Save As and possibility to rename the document directly in the user interface

Please note that the Save As operation needs support in the integrations

For example, Save As for richdocuments for ownCloud and Nextcloud was implemented and will be available in their next releases

Document name in the user interface

The document name is now displayed in the top right corner of Collabora Online

Spell checking improvements in Calc and Impress

The spell checking errors in Calc are now always visible and not only during editing.

If you want to change the document language go to Tools -> Language menu in Calc and Impress.

We have added “None (Do not check spelling)” option for all Writer, Calc and Impress.

Various smaller fixes

Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) 2.1.5

Together with the release of Collabora Online 2.1.5 we will also release version 2.1.5 of the development edition of Collabora Online: CODE. The development edition is aimed at home users and contains the latest and greatest developments. We want as many people as possible to try it out and get back control of their own online documents. We’d also love to get people involved in our efforts to make LibreOffice Online even better. Download the Docker Image, enjoy using it at home and why not participate in the project too!

For more information on CODE, and info on how to get it, please check out our CODE page.

Online demo

You can get an online demo of Collabora Online and try it out yourself right now!

About Collabora Productivity:
Collabora Productivity is the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, providing a range of products and consulting to enterprise and government. Powered by the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers in the world, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community. Collabora Office for Desktop and Collabora Online provide a business-hardened office suite with long-term, multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora, the global software consultancy dedicated to providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries. For more information, visit www.collaboraoffice.com or follow @CollaboraOffice on Twitter.

Cambridge, United Kingdom – October 9, 2017 – Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, is excited to announce a new release of its flagship enterprise-ready cloud document suite – Collabora Online 2.1.4, with new features and multiple improvements.

The Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) has been updated to version 2.1.4 as well.

What’s new in Collabora Online 2.1.4?

The following features and improvements are new since Collabora Online 2.1.3:

Spell checking support

In Writer, Calc and Impress

New Tools -> Automatic Spell Checking option to turn the spell checking on and off

New Tools -> Language for selection, Language for paragraph and Language for entire document submenus in Writer

These allow the users to create multi-lingual documents with Collabora Online easily. One sentence in English, and the other in German? No problem!

Status bar indicates the current language

Improved user experience of the startup

Menu and toolbar show already before the document is loaded

Easier High Availability handling

Now all the requests that need to end up at the same node have a WOPISrc= URL parameter, it is not necessary to examine the URL path any more

WOPI

PutFile now provides two custom request headers:

X-LOOL-WOPI-IsModifiedByUser – true/false indicates whether the document was modified by the user when they saved it

X-LOOL-WOPI-IsAutosave – true/false indicates whether the PutFile is a result of autosave or the user pressing the Save button

RPM and Deb triggers

Update systemplate when new versions of system packages are installed

Several smaller fixes

Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) 2.1.4

Together with the release of Collabora Online 2.1.4 we will also release version 2.1.4 of the development edition of Collabora Online: CODE. The development edition is aimed at home users and contains the latest and greatest developments. We want as many people as possible to try it out and get back control of their own online documents. We’d also love to get people involved in our efforts to make LibreOffice Online even better. Download the Docker Image, enjoy using it at home and why not participate in the project too!

For more information on CODE, and info on how to get it, please check out our CODE page.

Over 1.5 million docker pulls!

Collabora Online continues to grow at an amazing speed! Not too long ago the Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) reached 1 million docker pulls – now we have over 1.5 million pulls! Get your own docker image from https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code/ and check out https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/ for more details on how to integrate this image if your favorite File Share and Sync solution.

Online demo

You can get an online demo of Collabora Online and try it out yourself right now!

About Collabora Productivity:
Collabora Productivity is the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, providing a range of products and consulting to enterprise and government. Powered by the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers in the world, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community. Collabora Office for Desktop and Collabora Online provide a business-hardened office suite with long-term, multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora, the global software consultancy dedicated to providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries. For more information, visit www.collaboraoffice.com or follow @CollaboraOffice on Twitter.

Cambridge, United Kingdom – August 22, 2017 – Collabora Productivity, the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, is excited to announce a new release of its flagship enterprise-ready cloud document suite – Collabora Online 2.1.3, including even more new features and improvements.

The Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) has been updated too to version 2.1.3.

What’s new in Collabora Online 2.1.3?

The following features and improvements are new since Collabora Online 2.1.2:

Improvements in the Admin Console

list of users of a given document

indication whether documents are modified

Implemented basic editing of charts

Find & Replace for Calc and Impress (already available in Writer in 2.1.2)

New authorization method

You can now specify a custom http header for WOPI integration

Added configuration of memory handling

Added configuration of rlimits

Better handling of conflict between editing and uploading documents

Extended document conversion API

Support for RHEL6 / CentOS6

Support for SLES11SP4

Support for Debian 9

Many more small features & fixes

Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) 2.1.3

Together with the release of Collabora Online 2.1.3 we will also release version 2.1.3 of the development edition of Collabora Online: CODE. The development edition is aimed at home users and contains the latest and greatest developments. We want as many people as possible to try it out and get back control of their own online documents. We’d also love to get people involved in our efforts to make LibreOffice Online even better. Download the Docker Image, enjoy using it at home and why not participate in the project too!

For more information on CODE, and info on how to get it, please check out our CODE page.

Over 1 million docker pulls!

Collabora Online is growing very fast! The Collabora Online Development Edition (CODE) has reached over 1 million docker pulls in just one year, and is growing faster and faster, providing more and more people with LibreOffice in the Cloud! Get the docker image from https://hub.docker.com/r/collabora/code/ and check out https://www.collaboraoffice.com/code/ for more details on how to integrate this image with various solutions.

Online demo

You can get an online demo of Collabora Online and try it out yourself right now!

About Collabora Productivity:
Collabora Productivity is the driving force behind putting LibreOffice in the Cloud, providing a range of products and consulting to enterprise and government. Powered by the largest team of certified LibreOffice engineers in the world, it is a leading contributor to the LibreOffice codebase and community. Collabora Office for Desktop and Collabora Online provide a business-hardened office suite with long-term, multi-platform support. Collabora Productivity is a division of Collabora, the global software consultancy dedicated to providing the benefits of Open Source to the commercial world, specialising in mobile, automotive and consumer electronics industries. For more information, visit www.collaboraoffice.com or follow @CollaboraOffice on Twitter.